Dated March 31, 2018, DCAA’s annual report to Congress was released for publication on May 27, 2018. No word on why it took two months to approve release to the taxpayers, the people that DCAA ostensibly serves.

And that’s about as snarky as we want to be. Let’s try reporting the rest of the story by sticking to the facts.

Facts:

• Headcount increased by 144 auditors; now at 4,167 auditors on staff. To address attrition, this required hiring ~400 heads.

• Audit sustention rate (incurred cost audits) = 28.7%

• Audit sustention rate (forward priced proposals) = 66.2%

• Audit sustention rate (all other audits) = 42.4%

• Incurred cost backlog now at 2,860, which DCAA estimates to be a 14.3 month backlog. Based on GFY 2017 progress, DCAA estimates that it will have eliminated the backlog completely by the close of GFY 2018. As part of closing-out incurred cost years, DCAA disposed of 3,358 contractor proposals by "memo;" while 1,901 years were closed for "other reasons"--which included contracting-out of audits by non-DoD agencies.

• DCAA estimates that it will have eliminated the incurred cost backlog by GFY 2018, even though it is taking (on average) 808 days to complete an incurred cost audit and issue a report. But that metric is old math; in the old math scenario the clock starts ticking when the contractor’s proposal is received. Using the new math metric, it only takes DCAA 143 days from the time the audit starts to the time the audit report is issued. So: 143 days it is. That’s much faster.

Nothing more to report about the annual report.